A three-day symposium at Bellagio on “Climate Futures.” is the first phase of our
project and will identifyinnovative social, political, economic, and cultural approaches and
proposals for dealing with the crisis of climate change. Our primary objective
is to bring climate justice organizations and grassroots activists into
conversation with public intellectuals and scholars from across the natural,
physical, and social sciences to brainstorm ideas on how to craft action plans
that address the root causes and future impacts of climate change around the
world. These multi-faceted plans will not only help strengthen local, national,
and global initiatives but will also incorporate policies created with
grassroots input building on the interconnections among climate justice and
social justice, sustainable livelihoods, transparent and participatory
governance, and innovative political forms to contribute to the transition to a
low-carbon, just future.

The
cross-disciplinary conversations at the symposium will also become part of a
volume entitled Climate Futures: Re-imagining Global Climate Justice.Co-edited by the four symposium
organizers, the book will draw on submissions by the symposium participants and
others identified by the group. In addition to more typical scholarly formats,
some contributions will take the form of conversations, interviews, and
creative works. Both the symposium and the book will be examples of a public
engagement arising from the collaboration of the cutting-edge scholarship and
practical, grassroots work and knowledge production that we feel is necessary
to tackle issues that affect the future of our planet.

The forces
at play now that create an opportunity for positive change on the issue

The
early twenty-first century has revealed climate change as the most dramatic
threat to humanity’s prospects for a dignified future on the planet. In
December 2015, the UN will convene in Paris to finalize a global climate treaty.However, the process has been marked by a
protracted stalemate, while the agreed two degrees Celsius threshold of warming
is jeopardized by current business as usual models and heightened extraction of
extreme forms of fossil fuel energy. A rapidly growing global climate justice
movement has risen in response, with thousands of organizations interlinked in
a vast network of networks. As the UN summit approaches, these movements are
striving to persuade governments and global institutions to take decisive steps
including, most significantly, signing a fair, scientifically sound, and
legally binding global climate treaty. Our symposium is thus particularly
timely for policy-makers and climate justice movements seeking to influence the
treaty for the better.

Impacts on poor or vulnerable populations

Climate
change is already impacting all regions of the world, with droughts, floods,
extreme heat waves and storm surges producing crop failures, migration, and
economic damage. Climate justice perspectives recognize that the brunt of
climate change falls hardest on the poorest and most marginal people
everywhere. These gendered inequalities traverse pensioners, urban slum
dwellers, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and rural communities. Cases
of climate refugees -- women affected by drought and food shortage that
increase their burdens or Inuit populations displaced by eroding shorelines and
melting permafrost -- are all too frequent. In addition, small island states,
such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Kiribati in the Pacific, and Cape
Verde off the west coast of Africa, face the risk of being drowned or losing
their freshwater resources as sea levels rise, posing the devastating prospects
of loss of livelihood and homeland for millions of people.

The work at Bellagio

The symposium will bring together nineteen social
scientists, atmospheric scientists, journalists, public intellectuals, and
activists from the global North and the global South to work collaboratively on
new understandings of the economic, social, political and cultural
underpinnings of the climate crisis. This synergy will also be designed to
generate innovative action plans and solutions. On the first day
participants will discuss their previously submitted website proposals and
interact in facilitated conversations. On Day 2, we will develop cross-disciplinary
perspectives through engaged break-out sessions based on regional and national
climate issues.The final day will
concentrate on planning scenarios and “green prints” for the future to be presented at the 2015 COP 21, using a variety of dissemination
outlets. The plans and scenarios will be catalyzed through a visionary “World
Cafe” brainstorming process and facilitated conversations.

Dissemination

One product of
the symposium will be a book (in print and e-book formats) entitled Climate
Futures: Re-imagining Global Climate Justice.This will emerge from submissions by the symposium participants,
augmented by others. The symposium will also lead to the production of action plans aimed at a number of
different levels from building resilient communities to influencing
policy-makers at local, national and international contexts. These plans will be presented at the
December 2015 COP 21 Paris climate summit.